Getting to know each other

Walk-stop- say helloParticipants walk around the room/space. When the Joker says for example: stop and shake hands, participant stops and goes next to the person closest, shakes hands and says her/his name. The Joker can also say: stop and belly, stop and foot, stop and head…etc. then the nearest persons touch each other with that part of the body.

What will your shoes say about you?Participants stand in a circle. The Joker asks the person next to them: If your shoes could talk, what would they say about you? Then the person should say something about themselves. You could also ask what your socks would say about you. The exercise can also be done in pairs (two and two).

The invisible microphone:The participants stand in a circle. The Joker enters the centre and pretends that s/he is adjusting an imaginary microphone, maybe tapping it to see if it works, then introduces themselves to the audience by relating one or two facts. Then s/he invites the participants to do the same until everybody has introduced themselves. The exercise is especially good when participants are not familiar with each other. If they do know each other they could tell “secrets” not known to the rest.

3 things in commonThe participants join groups of 3. Each group has to find three things all members in the group have in common. E.g. pets, colour of eyes, number siblings, likes or dislikes… When they have found what they have in common, they can share with the rest of the participants.

Human Bingo
This exercise can be used when people meet for the first time but it could be a good exercise for a more extended FT project over a few weeks as well (as may be the case if you are using digital media after the initial session).

Collect some basic information on participants’ interests and then use this to create a sheet of paper with 10 attributes (e.g. is interested in photography, speaks Swahili), each one from a different participant. Ask all participants to move around the room asking each other if any attribute applies to them and writing the name of a person next to each attribute. The first person to collect 10 different names shouts ‘bingo!’ and is the winner.

All of the participants across the exercise should have found out more about each other and, because the activity requires quite a bit of moving around, it also works well as a physical warm up for the theatrical activities.